#10: Breadcrumbs

I haven’t written much on this blog for a while now, but I have been thinking about it – a lot. I still get lovely messages about Coming Out, and after finally inviting somebody else to contribute, this thing I started on a whim a few months ago is finally starting to feel like a little community beyond myself.

This brings to mind a new question: who am I actually writing this for?

I want somebody else to read all of this. Of course I do. Not in a pretentious way (if I can help it at all). But in a way that gives all of this stuff some sort of meaning. The other day, I wrote:

“My place in this world is solely dependent on my relation to those around me. Without our connections, I don’t exist.“

I think that’s true. I need somebody else, a satellite, to read this once it’s put out there in the open, so that I can lock-in my co-ordinates, and get a sense of where I really am.

Audience is important. Our notion of who we are writing for frames the very way we write. If I was writing in a personal diary, I think this journal (of sorts) would look very different. I wouldn’t have felt a need to “come out” with my disability, for example; and even if I did write that piece in a soon-to-be-misplaced notebook, I don’t think the experience would have had quite the brevity that it had, once my secret was out in the open.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m writing just for others, though. In a way, I think I’m actually writing for a future self as well. These blog posts are like breadcrumbs: scattered remnants of myself as I stumble along my journey from A, to B, to Z, to H, to Y, to who-knows-where. If I ever get lost along the way, I know I can retrace my steps back to where it all began: my roots; my home; my origin.

Sometimes, it’s good to be lost – as long as you know how to get back in the end.